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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015708">growing pains</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/requin_renard/pseuds/requin_renard'>requin_renard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tintin - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blood and Injury, Complete, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Friendship, Head Injury, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Amnesia, Injury Recovery, One Shot, haddock being daddock, haddock is a mother hen, loss of self, not too much graphic violence, tintin is angsty</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:54:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015708</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/requin_renard/pseuds/requin_renard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tintin somewhat loses himself and Haddock gains a son.</p><p>"He spent nearly three days crouching in that plastic chair, watching the other’s small chest moving up and down. Willing it to keep rising and falling like the world depends on it.<br/>Haddock realises that in fact, his world did depend on it."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>growing pains</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this was inspired by one of the literature modules i'm studying, about the effects of trauma on memories and how we understand ourselves.<br/>i wrote in present tense because i love how estranging, distanced and immediate it feels - perfect for a narrative about being unsure of who exactly you are.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They find him lying prostrate on the ground.</p><p><br/>
It takes them a while, navigating their way over the smashed up inventory, the piles of tarpaulins and the stacks of crates and metal barrels strapped up in the hold.</p><p>“Where is he? I can’t see him!” Haddock’s voice is far away, frantic. Tintin can hear that urgent edge coming into his gruff bark, can almost visualise him twisting and turning and searching all over. “Milou’s here, so he can’t be far, surely?”</p><p>“He wasn’t sighted leaving via the main gangplank,” another voice says. “So he’s either still somewhere in the hold or… overboard...”</p><p>Tintin tries to make a noise, to signal his position amongst the shattered wood and piles of aged, brine-salted rope.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I’m here I’m here I’m here, can’t you see me?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He can’t seem to make his mouth open or any sound come out. If he forces himself, he can make his left foot jut out and bash against an oil drum. It rings out bluntly.</p><p> </p><p>“Stop! Everyone shut up!” Haddock shouts. “Can’t you hear that? Tintin? Are you here?”</p><p>A hush falls across the low muttering of voices. Tintin musters up all the force in his body and kicks out again. The drum echoes, metallic and hollow. “Go on, Milou, find your master – where is he? Where’s our boy?” Tintin can hear Haddock fussing with the dog. Once more, he strikes out against the oil drum.</p><p> </p><p>Suddenly there are hands all over him, touching his face and his clothing, turning him over. There’s a hot little tongue licking at his ears and cheeks but he can’t say a thing. He feels like he’s been cracked into a million little pieces, his bones and flesh and blood all pulverised and oozing out of him and onto the floor. He lies on his back now, having been roughly pulled, and stares upwards. Everyone appears to him through a thick pane of frosted glass.<br/>
<br/>
He can see the captain, bending down and murmuring, cupping his face and touching his forehead and combing his hair. There are other people too – the dock officials, the Thompsons, a tall woman in a long coat who looks like she’s also from Interpol. They’re all asking him so many questions and they flutter around his head like colliding butterflies. He tries to answer them, tries to tell the captain to please stop squeezing his hand so tightly because it feels like it’s in a vice, to tell everyone please, just give him a minute to find his voice and he’ll answer all their questions.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I’m alright, I’malrightjuststopshoutingforasecondpleasepleasepleas-</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Blackness. He shuts his eyes, just for a moment, and their peering, frantic faces disappear.</p><p>-</p><p>Hospital.</p><p>He’s been in enough to recognise that thick smell of plastic and disinfectant and rubber. He can hear the beep of a monitor, the squeak of soled shoes on the tiles. He can smell the horrible staleness of hospital cotton. There’s another smell – sweet, floral. Something else too, something warm and familiar and sweaty.</p><p>He opens his eyes one at a time. Yes, it’s a hospital.<br/>
He’s tucked into a cot and connected to a network of beeping, dripping tubes. The light is buzzing above him. There’s a small bunch of white chrysanthemums in a jar beside his head – his favourite. He looks the right of him and Haddock is crumpled into a chair. He’s such a big man and the tiny plastic stool is dwarfed by his frame. It makes him look gigantic. His chin is dipped to his chest and he has a barely read book balanced on his knee. He’s not in his sweater and overcoat, instead in a creased yellow shirt, the collar open messily. The slow drowsy wheezing of his chest signals to Tintin that he’s asleep.</p><p>Tintin tries to crane his neck to see if he can find a clock or a calender. He’s lost so much time in these strange liminal spaces in his life. He briefly remembers being shot, back in Syldavia, and the days that were snatched away from him. He fears he once again has been walking in the limbo of prolonged unconsciousness.</p><p> </p><p>His throat is so dry it feels sharp. He tries to swallow and it feels as if his throat is sealing up. He makes sound and it comes out as a pathetic, scratching squeak.</p><p>It’s enough to rouse the man slumbering in the tiny chair though. He snaps awake, eyes bleary and not quite seeing. Tintin shifts in the bed and looks at him, making the squeaking noise again.<br/>
His head feels like it’s been cracked open, stuffed with old rags and straw and then tightly wrapped up again. His jaw throbs. Just looking around the room gives him a dull thudding ache in the base of his head. There’s a metallic taste of old blood in his mouth.</p><p>“Water,” he tries again. Haddock blinks at him, eyes red raw and hung with heavy bags. Then he bolts forward and grabs a glass from the cabinet beside them and gently holds his head, tipping the water to his lips.</p><p>“Tintin,” he says, “God, you’re awake, you’re awake-” He takes the glass away and runs to the door of the room. “Nurse! Nurse! He’s awake!”<br/>
“Don’t shout...” Tintin manages weakly. He winces as Haddock rushes back to his bedside. The captain is moving so erratically it’s giving him vertigo.</p><p>“Right – yes, sorry,” he looks sheepish and lowers his voice. “It’s just, blistering barnacles, you really scared us for a while, lad,” Haddock leans forward and kisses him firmly on the forehead, his beard tickling Tintin’s skin. “I really thought you’d gone, you’d left me.”</p><p> </p><p>He’s never kissed him before. Tintin doesn’t feel uncomfortable, but it’s surprising. They are not strangers to a hug or a loose arm around the shoulders – this feels different. Tintin wonders what it means.<br/>
He doesn’t have time to wonder for long because the nurse comes rushing in and banishes Haddock to the corner whilst she shines lights in Tintin’s eyes and asks him who the Premier is. The captain stands with a scowl and his hands tucked into his pockets, keeping watch. Tintin is embarrassed by how much everyone is fussing.</p><p>“Well young man,” the nurse clicks her tongue, satisfied there are enough brain cells left in his poor bruised head. “You certainly gave everyone a fright. It really was touch and go for a while.”</p><p>Tintin manages a weak smile.</p><p>“It’s not my first rodeo,” he says. She looks sympathetic.</p><p>“Nasty piece of work, whoever did this to you,” she frowns and presses her lips together tightly. Then she cocks her head towards the man lurking in the corner. “Like a mother wolf or something, that one,” she says with a conspiratorial smile. “He chased all the press off, wouldn’t leave you for a second.”</p><p>Tintin moves his head and looks over to the Captain with a soft smile. Haddock flushes and frowns even further.</p><p> </p><p>They give him a day to recover before Interpol swoops back in and starts to interrogate him. Haddock forces hospital gloop down his face and sits, glaring, in the tiny plastic chair as Tintin is questioned over and over again. He tries to remember what happened; lots of fists raining down on his head, his shoulders. He squints but he can’t see a face. They show him lots of grainy photographs of the ship’s crew but he can’t pick any of them out as his attacker.</p><p>Looking at the photographs gives him that vertigo feeling again and Haddock senses his weariness. He stands up and gruffly snaps at the agents that isn’t it time to hurry on back to being useful some place else.</p><p>After two weeks of the piercing smell of rubber and lukewarm rice pudding, they discharge him. Haddock insists on wheeling him out of the main entrance and bares his teeth at the reporters gathered there to catch the story.</p><p>“He’s got nothing to say to you animals! You bloody incredulous cosmonauts!” he shouts, arms waving about madly. “Leave the poor boy alone!”</p><p>Tintin watches, amused, as the group of reporters grab their flashbulbs and notepads and head for the hills.</p><p> </p><p>Moulinsart is full of flowers when they return. Haddock grumblingly tells him its been like living in a botanical greenhouse. Tintin half expects there to be a hive of bees buzzing about in the air above their heads. There are bouquets from all manner of people – world leaders, scientists, organisations that Tintin has helped. The Sober Sailors have even sent one.</p><p>“We can’t move for blistering plants,” Haddock rumbles as he helps him through to the drawing room.</p><p>“Crumbs, it’s like I’ve died or something,” Tintin remarks, pausing to smell a bouquet of red and white roses set on the telephone table, sent by Castafiore. Haddock stops, turns to him.</p><p>“We thought you had.” He says quietly. Tintin can’t think of a reply.</p><p> </p><p>Tintin spends a lot of time walking around Moulinsart and running his hands over every surface he finds. He likes the feeling of the polished wood furniture on his fingertips, the firmness of pressing against the old doorways and plastered walls. They don’t feel as if they are suddenly going to collapse and fall away from him.<br/>
Sometimes when the dizzy feeling is at its worse he’ll stand in the tiny doorway in the east corner of the drawing room and brace his hands against the frame, standing like a starfish, muscles taunt. He pretends that he’s holding up the entire châteaux; that if he falters, the whole building will come crashing down around them. It makes him feel a lot stronger than he is.</p><p> </p><p>But other things have changed too.</p><p> </p><p>He somehow finds himself unable to type. The words seem to flood out of the tips of his fingers and disappear into the stratosphere. Usually he has no problem in getting to work but instead, he sits and stares at the blank page until he breaks out in a cold sweat. He tries to arrange what happened in his head but he can’t seem to get the pieces of the story to sit still.</p><p>He’s entering the ship, pistol in hand. Then he’s waking up in the hospital. Then he’s back on the docks and running towards the gangplank. It’s all a great tangled mess of flashing images in his head and it makes him nauseous. He scrapes back his chair and quickly leaves the study, locking the door behind him.</p><p> </p><p>He ducks out of the sight of mirrors now. He has never been a vain man but mirrors have become something of a superstitious aversion. Tintin didn’t get to see the extent of his injuries when he was in the hospital but when he returned home, he caught sight of himself in the large ornamental mirror in the front hall and it scared him senseless. He looks lopsided; his left cheek and jawline are swollen and puckered with stitches. His eyes are blackened and the end of his nose sticks out at a jaunty angle from where it had been broken in two places. It is like looking at a stranger.</p><p>He covers the looking glass in the corner of his room with a sheet and takes the long way round through the kitchen instead of passing through the front hall.</p><p> </p><p>He’s trying to pull a book from the bookcase when Haddock finds him in the library.</p><p>He’s been attempting to dig out the leather bound encyclopedia for about ten minutes. Before, he had mastered the art of deftly hooking one’s finger round the top of the leather jacket and tilting the book at just the right angle so that it slides out and lands with a satisfying thud in one’s outstretched hand. It barely took a moment’s thought.</p><p>Now, Tintin can’t quite seem to do it. That cold sweat is prickling on his forehead again as he tries desperately to tug the book from the shelf. It is stuck fast, sandwiched between thick black tomes. He digs his nails into the book cover and tries to prise it free. It does not come away.</p><p>He makes a grunt of exasperation and suddenly, he is crying. Standing, leaning one hand against the bookcase whilst the other presses up to his mouth and crying, snivelling, completely unsure of why. He’s frustrated – so hot and angry he can feel it flooding round his body like a tidal wave. He hates himself, hates what he’s become.</p><p>He hears Haddock come thundering in through the door with such a speed Tintin suspects he’s been tailing him. He often gets the feeling Haddock is watching him, just out of sight. He always appears far too quickly.</p><p>“Tintin?” he calls hesitantly. Tintin clutches at the bookcase and says nothing. Then Haddock is coming over and putting a warm hand on his shoulder, he’s turning him around and folding his big strong arms around him and holding him, keeping him together. Tintin doesn’t hug him back but clutches the hem of his sweater with his free hand. “There now, lad, you’re alright.”</p><p>“I can’t do it,” Tintin mumbles into the space between them. “I can’t get the book out, I can’t even type any more. I don’t know who I am, Captain.”</p><p>Haddock rubs his back briskly. He’s worried; Tintin is not one for tears. He’s only seen him cry once or twice before and that was in Tibet, which was understandable. He isn’t the type to cry over something like a bookcase. Haddock wonders if he’s been trying to do too much too soon.</p><p>“Don’t be silly,” he says with contrived joviality. “You’re Tintin – famous boy reporter! We know who you are!” He can feel the tightness of the other’s shoulders, stretched like a rubber band about to snap. He must be so strung out and exhausted – healing is not an easy business. Tintin makes no reply. “Come on, let’s have some tea, then maybe you should rest a little.”</p><p>Tintin dries his eyes on the handkerchief that Haddock offers him and lets himself be led out of the library. He mumbles a self conscious, apologetic comment and Haddock tells him to be quiet.</p><p>Sitting cross legged on his bedspread, Tintin holds Milou in his lap and looks about the sculptures, the tapestries, the tattered photographs that adorn his walls. He squints at the faces within them and tries to remember how it felt to be there, to be in the jungles of South America, to be out on the open sea.<br/>
He wonders if a part of him slid out of his head amongst all the blood and bone and broken fragments that splattered the floor of the ship’s hold.<br/>
As if the man that was left behind is missing something. He feels like a piece of tracing paper has been laid over the top of him, but his image has been copied slightly too far to the left or right.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>He isn’t sure how to fit himself back into his body. There’s too much of him and not enough space.</p><p>Perhaps even, his body is too big and he’s unsure of how much of himself there is left to fill the gaps.</p><p>-</p><p>When it’s been a month or two, Haddock takes him to the coast for a weekend. The coast is good for recovery, they say; he’s read it in a thousand books.</p><p>It’s nice; he likes sitting on the sand with a cool tin of cola in his hand and watching Tintin scamper up and down the beach, waving driftwood for Milou to fetch and laughing boisterously. He hasn’t seen him like this in so long. His face is looking much better now, the swelling nearly gone and the bloody bruises mellowing out. But inside, something still hasn’t returned. Tintin is still withdrawn and jumpy. Sometimes even the sound of Milou barking a little too sharply will make him wince. Haddock has noticed that he won’t sit in certain chairs in the drawing room any more and, though he apologised profusely to Nestor, has lost his appetite for red meat. Haddock rarely hears the merry click of typewriter keys either, not since he found him crying in the library. He supposes Tintin probably doesn’t have much to say at the moment anyway.</p><p>He feels a burst of pride watching the lithe figure jump and twist about. He’s so proud of him for how he’s coming along. He’s nowhere near the bright eyed teenager he first met all those years ago – he’s paler, skinnier, a little more hunched in the shoulders. But he’s smiling and laughing and Haddock feels like the sun has come out. It’s been grey at Moulinsart for so long.</p><p>Sometimes he fantasises about finding the man that did this to his boy and breaking him up into tiny pieces. He’d kill him with his bare hands if he ever saw him again, he knows it. It’s almost a relief that Tintin can’t remember him, because if he did, Haddock would have crushed the man’s skull in without a second thought. He spent nearly three days crouching in that plastic chair, watching the other’s small chest moving up and down. Willing it to keep rising and falling like the world depends on it.<br/>
Haddock realises that in fact, his world did depend on it.</p><p>-</p><p>Tintin gets better, but slowly. He makes lots of very small steps and sometimes takes a few backwards. He still laughs more and smiles more but lapses into periods of quietness and moodiness. Haddock finds himself on round the clock surveillance, watching him, eagle eyed as Tintin moves about the house and the gardens. He feels like he’s minding a small child; terrified the youngster is going to trip and fall or choke on his mid-morning apple. Haddock has to remind himself that Tintin is a grown man, very capable of looking after himself and has done for many years prior. It does not stop him fretting.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a warm spring afternoon. Tintin was tired after their morning walk so Haddock suggests they retire to the drawing room for a bit. He doesn’t want him to exert himself too much.<br/>
Haddock reads <em>King Solomon’s Mines</em> aloud to him because it’s his favourite. Tintin knows it all back to front but he likes hearing the other read it anyway – Tintin thinks Haddock would do excellent poetry recitals but he knows Haddock would rather give up his pipe than struggle through ‘that fancy rubbish’.</p><p>“You’ve stopped,” Tintin comments. He looks up at the ceiling, hands folded on the hollow of his stomach. He hears Haddock shut the book and place it on the coffee table.</p><p>“Well, yes... I wanted to talk to you,” he responds, after a moment. “Are you… how are you?”</p><p>Tintin’s gaze traces the carved panelling of the ceiling. He swallows.</p><p>“The tablets are marvellous” he replies quickly. “I hardly get any pain any more.”</p><p>“I don’t mean just that,” Haddock murmurs. “You know what I mean.”</p><p>Because they haven’t spoken about it, not really. They’ve talked for hours about the swelling, the stitches, the plate in his jaw. The physio to make his hands and legs remember how to work again. The cocktail of drugs that Haddock watches him gulp down every morning with his orange juice and buttered toast.</p><p>But they haven’t talked about the other side of it.</p><p> </p><p>Like when Haddock wandered in to find Tintin staring, eyes narrowed, at Unicorn model they kept ceremonially mounted in one of the disused side parlours.</p><p>“Ah, that old thing,” Haddock said fondly.<br/>
“Three Unicorns in company, sailing in the noon day sun,” Tintin recited slowly. Haddock came up behind him, wiped some dust from the wooden model absently with his finger tip.</p><p>“Yes, that’s right lad,” he encouraged. The other man nodded, pleased with himself, fingered the tiny ropes of the rigging and walked off, Milou at his heels.</p><p>Like the way that suddenly, Haddock can almost beat him at chess. Haddock is not a good chess player, he lacks the patience and foresight to ever be good, whereas Tintin has the ability to always think three steps ahead. Lately, Haddock is finding himself putting the other in check far more often than he used to. Tintin frowns, then chuckles a little embarrassedly, and quickly finds a way out of it. Haddock feels awkward, like he’s done something out of turn.</p><p>Like the way that he used to find Tintin reading a different book every day of the week and now he’s been watching him struggle through a copy of <em>The Great Gatsby</em> for nearly a fortnight. He is still decidedly off, askew – it’s be expected, of course, after everything the boy has been through.</p><p>Off – that word doesn’t seem big enough to explain it.</p><p>Tintin gives a tired sigh.</p><p>“I do still feel strange, in myself,” he admits. He sits up then and looks earnestly at Haddock. Milou whines softly at his feet and he strokes him. “You know, it’s as if I’ve come back, but everything is slightly rearranged.”</p><p>Haddock looks at him, confused. Tintin sighs again.</p><p>“Like the world got broken up in a thousand tiny pieces and reassembled, but now the furniture has been moved a miniscule amount to the left. Or everything has been put just an inch too far out of my reach...” he tries to explain. “Sometimes, I don’t know how to be here, even though it’s my home and I’ve been here for years,” he pauses, and looks over to the Captain. “Do you understand me?”</p><p>Haddock hesitates.</p><p>“You mean to say,” he says. “That you feel like you don’t belong here?”</p><p>“No,” Tintin sharply cuts in. “I <em>know </em>I belong here. But it feels like the world has changed, and I don’t know how to interact with it. Like when the carbon paper on the typewriter doesn’t quite line up correctly?” he offers. “And now the facsimile is all crooked.”</p><p>Haddock watches him closely and says nothing. “I feel like the me that lived here before, before I was hurt, I… I feel like he died,” Tintin continues. “He died out there in that ship, and me, I... I’m someone new.” Tintin fusses his dog, avoiding eye contact. He’s feeling hot and cold and sweaty, all at once, but now he’s started he can’t stop. “It feels like I have to either learn how to be him again, or learn how to live in this new crooked world. And I don’t think either of them are going to be easy.”<br/>
Haddock keeps staring at him. There’s a great tenderness in his chest it almost crushes him. Tintin looks tiny, dwarfed in the massive plush sofa. He’s weary and peaky, keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs like he can’t ever be comfortable.</p><p>“I never thought about having children,” Haddock says suddenly. Tintin frowns, confused. He isn’t sure what this has to do with anything he’s just said. He tries to iron out the lines in his brow. “I didn’t think I could ever have the patience to look after someone else. I was only bothered about myself and where my next drink was coming from and who was going to keep my bed warm that evening.”</p><p>Tintin massages his temples, unsure of how to reply. It’s not that he feels uncomfortable; emotions have never been his forte and he isn’t exactly sure of how to translate what he feels for the captain into words. Because he thinks he knows where this is going.<br/>
But they’re not talkers, they’re do-ers and show-ers. And now Haddock is sitting here, paperback folded in his lap, and he’s talking honestly and solidly. He’s not blustering or flustered or tripping over his words for once. Tintin thinks he’s a very commanding man, when he isn’t working himself up into a diatribe of irate ramblings. He can almost see him as the fierce young seaman he must have been once, all those years ago.</p><p>“And then I met someone who made the world feel off kilter and I felt all my priorities change. And suddenly I could see myself perhaps being a father,” Haddock carries on, hands twisting over and over again in his lap. Tintin, awkward, shifts and leans onto his elbows. Haddock fixes him with a fierce stare. His eyes are bright. Tintin feels his cheeks go pink.<br/>
“When you were lying there, all hooked up to tubes and monitors and the doctors kept saying that they weren’t sure if you’d ever speak again, let alone be able to walk if you ever woke up,” Haddock is talking fast now and Tintin can tell he’s getting agitated. He reaches over and touches his knee but Haddock keeps on. “It felt like it was my own flesh, my own blood lying in that cot. If someone had asked me, I would have handed over my liver or my heart or my brain on a plate for you if you needed it.”</p><p>“I don’t think your liver is much use to anyone,” Tintin says lightly but Haddock narrows his eyes at him. Tintin quietens.</p><p>“What I’m trying to say, lad,” Haddock perseveres. “Is that sometimes, things happen and the world feels changed, or <em>we </em>feel changed, and the person we thought we were ceases to exist,” Tintin touches his own forehead gently. “But it doesn’t mean it has to be for the worst.”</p><p>That explains the kiss – he thought perhaps it came from somewhere else. He’d thought about it a lot recently, wondering what it meant in that moment and what it would mean in the future. There has always been a strange tension between them, an intensity that was hard to describe.<br/>
Now he realises it is paternity.</p><p>“I look at you,” says Haddock and the sincerity makes Tintin feel warm and tight in his chest. “And I see <em>my</em> boy; I see a son in you. And I don’t expect you to see a father in me-”</p><p>“Anyone would be lucky to have someone like you as a father, Captain,” Tintin interrupts breathlessly. He stands up and goes to perch on the arm of Haddock’s chair, taking his old rough hands in his own and squeezing them. “I’m no good at talking about these things, I admit, but you have cared for me more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my life.”</p><p>Haddock squeezes his hand back.</p><p>“I just wanted you to know,” he says, a little gruffly. “I wouldn’t want you to feel as if I was stepping on your toes or being overbearing or anything. I know you’re grown, and you can do it all alone, as you so often tell us all.”</p><p>Tintin smiles, sheepish.</p><p>“I don’t think I mean that. Not all the time, at least,” he touches his jaw gingerly, the patch of hair that they shaved away when they had to sew him back together again. “I don’t think I would be here without you.”</p><p>Haddock says nothing, simply looks up at him and cups him on the side of the face.</p><p>“You’re a good lad, Tintin,” Haddock says softly. “I’ve always been proud of you. Of who you are and who you’ve made me.”</p><p>Tintin, shy, tugs his face away and looks embarrassed but pleased. The dinner gong sounds and they hear Nestor calling. Haddock puts his hands on his knees and pushes upwards with a grunt.</p><p>“Make sure you wash your hands before you eat,” He tells him. Tintin gives him a quizzical look.</p><p>“I’m sorry?”</p><p>Haddock gives him an easy grin.<br/>
“Isn’t that what people tell their children? To wash their hands before dinner or they’ll ground them.”</p><p>“I’d like to see you try and keep me <em>anywhere</em>,” Tintin says impishly. “I’ve wormed my way out of enough locked rooms to put Harry Houdini to shame.”</p><p>“Don’t make me send you to the naughty step, now.” Haddock grins and Tintin pushes him away with scoff and a playful shove.</p>
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